The Broncos opened their season impressively, scoring four first period goals in route to a lopsided win over Alabama-Huntsville. Luke Witkowski started his year off with an assist. In 42 games last season Witkowski had one goal and eight assists.

No.3 North Dakota started their season with a win beating Air Force. New York Islanders prospect, Brock Nelson, had two goals and an assist for the Sioux including the game winner in the third. North Dakota takes on No. 5 Boston College tonight in the Ice Breaker final.

This is going to hurt for a while. WMU had the higher ranked Pioneers down 2-0 with five minutes left in the third period headed for an upset win when Denver scored twice in under two minutes to send the game to overtime. Jason Zucker (Minnesota Wild) scored the game winner in the extra session for Denver, who will move on to play North Dakota for the right to represent the Midwest Region in the Frozen Four.

Witkowskiâ€™s sophomore season comes to an end in disappointing fashion, but the big rearguard made great strides in his second year with WMU. He was one of the Broncosâ€™ leaders on defense and played big minutes. Witkowski tied for the team lead in penalty minutes and was tops in plus/minus. Heâ€™s got a great future ahead of him.

The 2011 NCAA Tournament has been set. Luke Witkowski and the Western Michigan Broncos (19-12-10) received the No. 3 seed in the Midwest Regional and will face No. 2 seed Denver (24-11-5). The Tournament begins this coming Friday, March 25 with the regional semifinals. Each round is single elimination.

This is the fourth appearance for the Broncos in the NCAA tournament and first since 1996. Western Michigan has a 2-2-0 record all-time against the Pioneers.

Cornell was not selected for the tournament meaning Kirill Gotovets and the Big Red's season has come to an end. Gotovets finishes his freshman season playing in 34 games, recording one goal and six assists for seven points. He finished with 32 penalty minutes and a plus-8, good for third overall on the team and the highest of any freshman on the roster.

Cornell (16-15-3) will sit and hope to receive a bid for the NCAA Tournament. The Big Red are rated 27th in the Pairwise Comparison Ratings, which is college hockey's objective system for ranking teams for tournament bids. There will be 16 teams that make the tournament. There are five automatic bids that go to the conference tournament champions of the five Division I conferences. The remaining 11 teams are selected based upon the Pairwise Ratings.

Boston College, Miami, Yale, Air Force, and North Dakota all have automatic bids. The Tournament Selection Show is tomorrow (Sunday) at 11:30 a.m. ET on ESPN2.